Dancing Backwards
Photo by Daria Trofimova on Unsplash
I was a sunbeam.
We were all sunbeams,
three four-year-old ballerinas
in yellow satin dresses.
Our audience,
the Women’s Club in our small town.
In the room assigned to us,
I waited with the other little girls
for time to go on.
Breathless,
jittery,
confident still.
I had practiced and practiced
and knew all the steps
perfectly.
I had, however, one small problem,
a problem I hadn’t anticipated
when learning the dance.
We were to sashay in,
a sideward sliding step
that would bring us in facing the audience.
I knew the sashay perfectly.
But from our hidden-away room
just off the main room where the women gathered,
I couldn’t see the audience.
How was I supposed to know which way to face?
Where would they be, this audience?
On this side?
Or was it that?
I peeked.
Ah . . . there they were,
all those waiting women,
my mother hidden among them, I knew.
But the instant I stepped away from the door,
the memory of what I’d seen vanished.
Where were they again?
I peeked
and forgot again
and peeked once more.
When, at last,
the thumping piano drew us forth,
I still had no idea
which way to face.
So I simply chose a direction
and threw my sunshiny heart
into the dance.
You probably know where this is going,
but I didn’t.
I knew only that when we finished our sashay
and began the first steps of the dance
I,
alone,
in the line of little girls,
found myself facing the back wall.
“Well, then, turn around!” you say.
But I couldn’t.
Don’t you see?
I had these steps,
important steps to do,
and no turning was allowed in the steps.
The women in the audience behind me
tittered.
Then they giggled.
The women,
my very own mother among them,
laughed right out loud.
Still,
I lifted my chin high
and danced on,
executing my steps perfectly,
exactly as I had practiced them,
my back
pressed
against
their
rude
laughter.
Only when the dance was over
did I find opportunity, at last,
to turn
to face my tormenters.
I scowled ferociously over my curtsey.
They found that funny, too.
My mother
drove me home afterward
without
a
single
word.
Many years later, though,
remembering my backward dance
in a row of right-facing girls,
I asked myself the question
my mother was too polite—
or perhaps too embarrassed—
to ask.
“Marion,” I said,
“knowing you were confused,
why didn’t it occur to you
to take your direction
from the other little girls?”
I asked the question,
but I have lived with myself too long
to pretend not to know the answer.
I have always,
for better and for worse,
taken my directions
from my own heart,
even when my heart is struggling.
Which means that,
more than once,
I’ve found myself
dancing
backwards.
